A portfolio of my past writing, and new stories as I develop them. Almost always deliberately funny.

Friday, June 3, 2016

NRR Project: ‘Gypsy Love Song’

Poster from a Depression-era revival of The Fortune Teller.

Gypsy Love Song

Eugene Cowles

1898 (recorded
5/4/1906)

3:48

Rrrrrromance!

Victor Herbert was only the most popular of many composers
whose operettas straddled the transition between opera and musical comedy in
America. “Gypsy Love Song” is Herbert’s first “hit,” from his 1898 The Fortune Teller. Others of his smashes
included Babes in Toyland, Mlle. Modiste, The Red Mill, Naughty
Marietta, Sweethearts and Eileen. Here’s it sung by the man who originated
the role onstage, Eugene Cowles. (Oddly, the designated National Recording
Registry recording was made by him in 1906, albeit its official Registry listing
is 1898, the year The Fortune Teller
debuted.) With Sigmund Romberg and Rudolph Friml, Herbert formed a triumvirate
of tastemakers whose lush and corny melodies would inspire affection – and contempt
– from generations to come.

Between DeKoven and Smith’s Robin Hood in 1890 to Romberg and Hammerstein’s The New Moon in 1928, operetta’s
spun-sugar settings, silly plots, and sentimental ballads dominated the musical
scene. It was a reflection of the zeitgeist. Suspicious of high culture,
Americans wanted less challenging fare in the post-Civil War boom era. Operetta
was something polite society could sit through and get its cultural fix from,
without straying into disturbing content, or arias in foreign languages. (For
the rest, there were minstrel shows, circuses, and pre-vaudeville variety.)

Musically, the genre is descended quite unapologetically
from the pre-established European template. Jacques Offenbach, Johann Strauss
II, Emmerich Kalman, and Franz Lehar set the mold with works such as Die Fledermaus, The Merry Widow, and The Land
of Smiles. It breaks no new ground, but within its limitations those who
grew up on it still hear it as a sensuous indulgence. The sprightly wit of
Gilbert and Sullivan’s works pushed tendencies toward the comic as well.

Operetta still required trained operatic voices, thus the
familiar herniated, nasal tone of Cowles’ voice. This is the kind of timbre
that would project into an unamplified theater; it sounds unnatural today and
contributes to that popular concept of high culture being tight-assed.

It doesn’t help that the lyrics are of the kind common in
the Victorian era: “The birds of the forest are calling for thee/And the shades
and the glades are lonely/Summer is there with her blossoms fair/And you are
absent only . . .” Ouch. These precious, convoluted rhymes would dominate until
the slangy vernacular of Tin Pan Alley lyricists started to invade the public
consciousness.

And what’s with all the gypsy mania? The culture of time is
filled with musical, visual, and literary use of the gypsy stereotype – emotional,
mystical, cunning, charming, and criminal. They make a great plot device,
usually kidnapping children before curtain’s rise to set up some lost-prince or
mistaken-identity kerfuffle. In a culture that was composed of immigrant
elements seeking assimilation, identifying a culturally exotic “other” was
necessary to foster group identity. This is a role in American culture that
would be assigned to “gypsies,” Jews, “negroes,” “Irishmen,” Italians, and “Indians,”
and continues in the demonized representation of Muslims and Hispanics today.
Aggression, transgression, and feeling are all projected safely onto the
exotics.

The list of memorable songs from the genre is long, and many
of them have crept into the Great American Songbook, if only for use as a
starting point for many instrumental jazz covers. Here’s a quick sample: “Softly,
As in A Morning Sunrise,” “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life,” “Lover, Come Back to Me,”
“The Streets of New York,” “Serenade,” “Indian Love Call,” “One Alone,” “Kiss
Me Again,” “Rose-Marie,” “Deep in My Heart, Dear,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “The Donkey Serenade” – passionate schmaltz.

This music permeated the minds of those growing up at the time.
They crowded the music rack of my great-grandmother’s piano in the front room;
we listened to them on 78 r.p.m. records, and my grandparents warbled them as
they worked. Later 33 1/3-r.p.m. compilations such as the Reader’s Digest Treasury of Great Operettas, and Gilbert and
Sullivan, were always on the turntable. Mitch Miller and his Sing-Along Gang
covered them. They were part of the cultural furniture of our household. (My
cultural childhood apparently took place largely about 75 years before it
should have.)

It was a fragment of German-culture respectability as well, the dominant one from which my ancestors migrated. Before Germany forfeited all claim to cultural respect by winning Worst Nation of the 20th Century honors, it was seen as the epitome of learned, literature society. German was common speech around the house until World War I, when anything Teutonic was seen as suspect. (One grandfather tossed the umlaut from his name, planing it down to a more American-sounding twang.) "German" charicatures in vaudeville overnight became "Dutch" comics instead; sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage" and frankfurters turned into hot dogs. "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz" became "Yours Is My Heart Alone."

Of course, they were outmoded soon after they debuted.
Comics such as the Marx Brothers and others mocked their conventions in their own
musical-comedy spoofs. Mel Brooks cites bold operetta marches such as "Stouthearted Men" or "The Song of the Vagabonds" in Robin Hood: Men in Tights and famously makes reference to Friml’s “Ah! Sweet
Mystery of Life” in his Young
Frankenstein. Equating the female orgasm with the tender sensibilities of
the song works even without context, but is even funnier if you know where
Brooks is coming from. He grew up in the time when MGM's filmed operetta adaptations starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were the top box-office draw in the country (1935-1942).

And I still find myself crooning them. They represent a time
so innocent it can hardly be comprehended now, little soap bubbles of melody
that never pop, as long as disbelief is suspended. Here are dashing tenors, comic basses, and stately sopranos. Dashing swains, flirtacious coquettes. Singing soldiers, waltzing royalty. And gypsies. Don't forget the gypsies.

The National Recording
Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in
the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Honolulu
Cake Walk.

About Me

This award-winning independent writer and editor returned to the place where he grew up after years as a wandering comedian. It's beautiful here. He served in a variety of capacities for the Boulder International Film Festival from 2006 through 2014. His writing portfolio includes stories written on topics ranging from grand opera to midget wrestling, for a diverse array of magazines, newspapers and websites worldwide -- including Film International, Westword, Boulder Magazine, Power Pickin', Parterre, Understanding Our Gifted, Movie Habit, Backstage, Muso, 5280, EnCompass, Senses of Cinema, Boulder Jewish News and . . . Philly Sports Faithful, for some reason. Also poet, playwright, screenwriter, blah blah blah. Check out his work at brad-weismann.com, filmpatrol.com and obitpatrol.com.

PM Dawn; Of the Heart Of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience

Ramones, Ramonesmania

Richard and Linda Thompson, Pour Down Like Silver

Richard Pryor, Wanted

Richard Thompson, Henry the Human Fly

Robert Klein, New Teeth

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma/Carousel/The King and I

Roger Miller, The Return of Roger Miller

Rolling Stones, Some Girls

Shostakovich, Symphony #4 - Inbal, Wiener Symphoniker

Sibelius, Symphony 5 (final version) -- Vanska, Lahti Symphony

Sly and the Family Stone, Anthology

Steeley Dan, Pretzel Logic

Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life

Stravinsky, Les Noces -- Bernstein

Strength in Numbers, The Telluride Sessions

Talking Heads, Fear of Music

The Kingston Trio, The Kingston Trio

The Kinks, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One

The Mothers, Cruisin' with Ruben and the Jets

The Mothers, We're Only in It for the Money

The Velvet Underground & Niko

Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club

Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner

Uncle Earl, Waterloo Tennessee

Van Morrison, Beautiful Vision

Village Music of Bulgaria/Bulgarian Folk Music

Vivaldi, The Four Seasons -- Zuckerman

Was (Not Was), Born to Laugh at Tornadoes

Ween, Chocolate and Cheese

Willie Dixon, The Chess Box

Willie Nelson, Shotgun Willie

XTC, English Settlement

" . . . you've got to stand up for the imaginative world, the imaginative element in the human personality, because I think that's constantly threatened . . . People do have imagination and sensibilities, and I think that does need constant exposition." -- John Read

"To disseminate my subjective thoughts and ideas, I stealthily hide them in a cloak of entertaining storytelling, since the depth of my thinking, shallow at best, might be challenged by erudite experts." -- Curt Siodmak